


The Green, Green Grass on the Other Side of the Fence

by Gammarad



Series: Writing Rainbow Works [5]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Absolute Power Corrupts Only A Little, Dialogue Heavy, Episode: s06e15 Tapestry, Featureless White Plain, If I Can't Have You, Missing Scene, Q Continuum, Temporary Physical Transformations, The Q-Managed Afterlife, temporary canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Q wants to spend eternity with Picard.Picard doesn't want to spend any more time with Q than he has to.
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
Series: Writing Rainbow Works [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558441
Comments: 8
Kudos: 69
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	The Green, Green Grass on the Other Side of the Fence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricket_aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/gifts).



Satisfied to have reestablished the original timeline by being stabbed yet again by the Nausicaan, Picard was laughing softly as he reappeared in the Q continuum blankness. Laughter dying, he looked around himself, then looked at Q.

"Everything is back as it was, just as you wanted, Jean-Luc," Q said. The empty white space surrounded them again, exactly as it had when Q showed up and said Picard's artificial heart had killed him. Q had his Starfleet uniform on again, and Picard was in his Ensign's jacket, the bloodstain and hole from the Nausicaan's sword included.

"This is not what I was wearing when I allegedly died," Picard pointed out. His voice was as unruffled as he could manage under the circumstances. 

"Spending eternity together will require several wardrobe changes if we are not to be intolerably boring." Q snapped his fingers theatrically. Picard was wearing a white ancient Roman toga and Q was wearing a similar one with purple borders. Their feet were encased in sandals of a similar vintage. 

"Q. I have no interest in staying here. I have better things to do than satisfying your need for a plaything." 

Q shimmered into a different form, an attractive woman somewhere in between the appearance of Vash and that of Marta: pale skin, dark eyes, trim dark hair, trim figure. "Perhaps it would be less onerous if I looked like this, mon capitane?" Incongruously, the voice Q used did not change.

Picard frowned. "Certainly not. Your appearance is hardly the reason I find your company unpleasant."

"Now, now, unpleasant is not the right word, Jean-Luc. Uncomfortable, it might be. Disconcerting? Piquant?" Q moved the fingers of one graceful hand to count the listed word options.

"Change back, Q."

"Oh, if you insist." Q returned to looking the way he usually did when visiting the crew of the Enterprise. "This form was only a whim of mine when we first met. I don't know why you humans are so narrow minded about appearances. You know I can take on any form I choose."

"You're wasting time." Picard sighed. "Fine, look however you prefer, then."

"But you like me to look like this. I will suffer it for your sake." 

"Do me no favors, Q."

"That's one of the annoying things about you humans. Most beings like it when a Q does them a favor. You humans, though. You never want anything."

"That is not so, Q. You have today done me a substantial favor." Jean-Luc smiled wryly. "And I should thank you for it, little though I like saying that."

"Oh yes, you should, go right ahead," Q said. "Thank me as profusely as you would like. I confess, though, it would be nice if you explained what it is you think the favor was."

"The all-knowing Q, does not already know that?" Picard smirked.

"Of course I know. It's only that when you thank me, I like hearing it explained." 

With Q, one never knew if such things were jokes or literal truth. Or both at the same time. "Very well. You helped me see that I had much less to regret than I had thought."

"That is true. Your attempts at altering it held much that was far more regrettable, especially the disgusting physical interaction between you and that young woman."

"Q, that was not the part I meant."

"And then when you woke up next to me, you nearly attempted to reenact the behavior."

"Q!"

"I dare say if I had looked more like Vash you would have proceeded."

"Where is Vash now, anyway?"

"I'm afraid I can't reveal that. She has gone off with some other Q and I have been forbidden to interfere." Q sounded mildly petulant. "Do not attempt to change the subject, Jean-Luc. We were discussing the disgusting para-reproductive habits of your species."

"The Q must have their own reproductive habits. Otherwise, we should never have encountered young Amanda." Picard reminded Q of the woman who had been born on Earth but of Q parents, and thought herself human until she came aboard the Enterprise.

"Amanda's parents were indulging in all sorts of behavior most Q would never dream of," Q said. "Physical reproduction was only one of many perverse experiments they attempted."

"What do Q usually do, then?" Picard's curiosity momentarily got the better of him. 

Q snapped his fingers again. Suddenly, both of them had physical forms that were entirely energy fields, no matter at all. 

The edge of Q's field rippled across the edge of Picard's. It was an indescribable sensation. 

Picard had no idea how to control his fields, nor why he felt like he had a body at all, nor why it felt amazing but also extremely peculiar when the ripple passed through his edge. He tried to speak, but had no idea how to do that either without a mouth or tongue or lungs or any other body parts he was accustomed to.

It seemed to take a long time, though since he was in a featureless white space it might not have been any time at all, for Picard to figure out how to maneuver this body and make it produce sounds, even, eventually, comprehensible speech. 

Hours, days, years? He had no way to know. Eternity would eventually dwarf any finite amount of time, so, Picard mused aloud in his new strange "voice" that reminded him of a klavion, "It might not matter."

"I'm still here," Q said. Q was still an energy being, but his voice sounded just like the human Q's voice had. 

"Why? Have you nothing else to occupy yourself with than a dead man who dislikes you, Q?"

"I've tried to get you to like me, Jean-Luc, but you are such a perverse creature. No matter what I try --" Q seemed about to continue, but did not. 

"Would it not be simple for you to use your power and make me like you?"

Q waved his edges over Picard's again, causing that indescribable sensation. Picard felt the nearly irresistible urge to return the gesture, the, it could be metaphorically considered to be, caress. He resisted.

"Of course I could make you believe you liked me any time I wanted to," Q said. "As you know since your Commander Riker told you Amanda had done with him. Your puny human intellect cannot distinguish between Q-imparted liking and the natural sort. We Q, on the other hand, can always tell. It is completely unsatisfying."

"I see." And Picard did see. "This, this waving sensation. Is this how Q touch one another?"

"Of course not, Jean-Luc! We are in the form of energy beings from the Alodion Cloud Nebula. Q have no such crude bodies of force field energy as these." 

No sooner had Q transformed Picard into an actual Q, than Picard, of course, began to laugh. Now he had the power to go home, be alive and himself again. He used it immediately, and was back in his body, Captain of the Enterprise again, and alive. He kept only enough Q power to repair his artificial heart, and relinquished it as soon as he could.

"His vital signs are stable," Dr. Crusher said. "Captain, Jean-Luc. You were injured, but I think you're going to be all right."

Despite the discomfort, he was back in his body, back in his life. Picard couldn't help it. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Q had managed, against all odds, to find a way to make Picard start to like him.


End file.
